The Lakeville Pharmacy in New Hyde Park is an anomaly.
In a business environment dominated by chain stores, the Lakeville Pharmacy is a local, independent.
“We’re the old-time pharmacy. We try to provide family-oriented service,” said co-manager. Norman Coleman, who’s been working at the pharmacy for the past 20 years.
If a customer needs assistance locating a product, a staff person at Lakeville Pharmacy will accompany the customer to find it, Coleman said.
That, he said, has been the pharmacy’s trade mark during the 60 years it has operated at its location at 749 Hillside Ave. and what explains its continued success.
“We offer personalized service,” said co-manager Grant Derwin, who’s been at the pharmacy for the past 16 years.
The pharmacy also separates itself from its competitors by the size of its surgical department, Coleman and Derwin said.
The surgical department includes a wider array of canes, walkers and other post-surgical products than chain store pharmacies typically carry, they said.
Surgical department sales represent between 8 percent and 12 percent of the store’s sales, according to Coleman. He said physicians often direct patients to the Lakeville Pharmacy for its selection of support stockings and other surgical supplies.
“You’re not going to get this in another store,” Coleman said. “The older people become, the more you’re going to sell those things.”
The pharmacy also offers special compound prescriptions.
Over the past two decades, Lakeville has had to differentiate its product selection beyond that of a traditional pharmacy to keep pace with the competition.
“We sell everything from A to Z,” Coleman said.
The pharmacy has long sold food staples such as milk. It also offer the diverse array of convenience store products that chain pharmacies offer, and their inventory includes greetings cards regularly sold at a 50 percent discount.
“We can do what the chains do, and we can do more,” Derwin said. “Once they see a chain, they think they’re getting a discount. They’re not getting a discount.”
The store’s layout is that of a traditional pharmacy, with the pharmacy located in the rear of the store. The front of the store is designed to afford customers the diverse product convenience of a general store. Items like milk or newspapers don’t help the profit margin, but the availability of those items encourage people to buy other items, Coleman and Derwin explained.
“It’s more of a font-end business. When they come in, you hope they pick up a pack of gum,” Coleman said.
The co-managers say the business has always been a competitive one, even before the days of the chain stores. The pharmacy’s location in a strip mall on the northeast corner of the intersection of Hillside Avenue and Lakeville Road is an advantage it has to drawing business.
But it’s word-of-mouth that they said enables the Lakeville Pharmacy endure, along with generations of families that shop there, Derwin and Coleman said.
So while its customer base is concentrated from nearby neighborhoods from New Hyde Park to Mineola, the Willistons, Little Neck and Glen Oaks, they also come from greater distances.
It hearkens back to a time when pharmacies were common on street corners, Coleman said. “We’re your real neighborhood pharmacy.”
